poem: revenant

The body does not know what world
it lives in. This is why when I dream of falling
from a cliff, my body shocks awake,
heart blasting a scream it no longer needs.
Where the soul moves, the blood will follow.

When the dream returned, on my way out
of my office, at work, just before my hand reached
the door, my tired body remembered you:
Lying on our sides, in someone’s bed,
you had lain your cheek in my hand.

When the dream returned to me
in my office, at work, my heart rioted

from reflex, my veins swelling
from the breath that rose in.
I was angry for only then waking up.
My body rooted itself through the carpet,
felt me slowly leaving, preparing itself to fall.

My left hand is the soil you left so quietly
open. My left hand still believes it is there,
in some room where you are alive,
this left brain blasphemy.

My left hand does not age. It has not surrendered
a cell of dead skin. It does not waste its grip
calling the soul back.

poem: Isis

“Arm. Hand. Foot. Calf. Thigh.
These: the five ways to love him.”
–Anonymous

After more than a year, after her husband’s
body was cut into thirteen pieces, scattered throughout
the Midwest, she nearly has all of him.

Once,
after discovering the second hand, in a
sewer in Indiana, after hissing at the rats nipping
at it, after her breath lit them into ash,
she returned home. To a freezer of two hands,
an arm and a thigh. This once did she indulge herself,
just enough, weeping slightly into the spoilt meat,
joining the right hand and arm at the wrist.
This once, she whispered a trio of ancient words,
then watched the hand slowly open, close.
She then took a paring knife
and separated them. She knew, if careless,
there was still time for her to go mad.

Now, with the torso gingerly retrieved from
a junkyard in Detroit, the smell of the rust
even stronger than the death, the torso lying
on the backroom floor, now she can finally
link the arms, to hands;
link the thigh, to calf, to foot, thigh to calf to foot.
Her husband is once again taller than her.
Long enough to leave the freezer for their bed.

She carries him there, lies them down.
She buries her screams. Soon, she will recover
the head, the pelvis. Then the work will be done:

it is then that she will mouth the final words,
watch the breath invade his lungs, then retreat
in a coughing fit. It is then that his eyes will slowly rebirth
his gaze, when their locking eyes will know the magic
can only sustain the reunion for an hour,
that there is no time for anything but lovemaking,
as mad as two can ever be in the face of the clock;

it is then that she will receive him for the last time
in this house. She will feel the life jetting through her,
into her, the quiet conception. She will feel the stirring
of her son before her husband is, once again, still.
She will sleep for an hour, then dress
and catch the 21 to work.

Before all of this, however, she has nearly all of him.
Just enough, to lie down.
Just enough, to wrap around.

The beauty of living in the city
is that no one believes you’re a goddess.
No one would question why she’d
collect the strewn pieces of the love of her life.
The beauty of living in the city

is that no one will see you
holding hands with a hand;
no one will ask
why it is holding you back.

2011 Film Recap

It feels like I haven’t seen as many films as I have previously, and certainly not all of the films I had on my list. But that’s how it goes, so here’s a list of what I saw, followed by my top seven.

2011 Movies I’ve Seen

The Artist (charming and creative though it felt 12-15 min too long)
Drive (has a number of awesome moments and Gosling’s dope, but didn’t stick with me that much)
The Ides of March (refer to “Drive” comments)
Melancholia (was very close to making my top seven but was missing a little something. the end scene is so good though.)
The Descendants (tried too hard to be both funny and tragic, but wasn’t a waste of money)
Bridesmaids (had a couple of moments I could have done without, but was damn good)
Red State (meh. the trailer was so much more interesting.)
The Muppets (VERY close to my top 7. so funny and touching. might elevate it later.)

#7: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (a surprise choice for most romantic film moment of the year for me. “may I kill him?” “yes.”)
#6: Shame (a refreshingly direct film, whose protagonist isn’t actually a person, but touch. unadorned, human touch.)
#5: Martha Marcy May Marlene (very effective blurring of past and present, though the end felt wholly unnecessary. everything else was too good though to deny it a spot.)
#4: Hugo (magic, man. didn’t even see it in 3D, and it felt like love letter magic.)
#3: Columbiana (a surprise for me, but I really liked this. great action, great central acting by Zoe Saldana, and a pair of characters I really cared about. pleasant surprise of the year.)
#2: My Week With Marilyn (Michelle Williams caught Marilyn. she bottled the magic and gave it back to us. and the movie itself just gave me the goodies.)
#1: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (this fuckin movie. blueprint to revolution. straight up.)

poem: when the song is done

For a moment, the song is killing you.
Because it is perfect. Because you remember
the silence before you pressed play, before the music
dragged itself through the speakers, before you
knew how miserable you were without
this sound. This song. This music strains of everything
you’ve been holding in your belly, your chest,
everything you’ve been desperate not to allow to burst,
to bloom into wails at the coffee shop, unable to
explain to the barista what your headphones have done to you.
This song was made for your sorrow, this specific sorrow
from this most exact and exquisite backhand of your life.
This is an Argentine music, with a trio of
violin, piano and cello that makes you curse every day of your life
you had not learned to play all of them, could never express the
strains of this sorrow on your own.
And the grief,
it just hangs…from skin too young to loosen from the bone.
The music is ugly, in the way a lover is once they’ve turned
their back to you, when you know the silence after is all yours,
inelegant, inarticulate, merciless. But dear god, when the music plays,
when it plays, for every moment you’d spent swallowing the burst,
the music is a middle and ring finger at the back of your throat.
And now, for the three minutes and forty-four seconds of this song,
when it retches out of you, it is exactly right.  Every chord is an extracted image of you, convulsing in the shower, frozen under moon, pounding your mattress,
heaving in the car.  These moments are knitted together,
frankensteined by the sound.  The coffee shop is your living room,
the trio playing four feet away while you shudder from the wall,
as if the universe grabbed you by the sternum and roared,
this is why you have dragged yourself this far,
the blood is the paint, the blood is the wine; the reason you’re still here
is to know beyond doubt the day that broke you, to know
that when you’re done hating the fist, no other sorrow in your life
will sound like this.

And you hear.
You hear. It is almost worth it.

For a moment, the song
is over. And it is then that you know,
after all the therapy, the pills, the fucking and the sleep,
you know how long the repeat button has kept you alive.

poem: when the tape runs out

Approximately 100 years from now, following nuclear catastrophe, archaeologists stumble upon a buried tape recorder. Inside they find a tape. Upon administrative approval, one of them presses ‘play’.

This was supposed to be a mixtape
we had it all planned out
we’d read the graffiti on the walls
and knew the sky was finally falling down
we weren’t really that upset about it
we weren’t interested in politic
we hoped our art would do the job
we kept telling ourselves that presidents still listened

to mixtapes, drew their wisdom from underground,
we read in our scriptures that kings rise from the ghetto
so we always figured somewhere somehow one of us
would rise, send the world’s nova into remission
but this time we waited too long, we allowed one war too loud,
and now we’re in a bomb shelter,

we’re starving, scrapping for scraps,
’til one of us said: we gotta leave some kinda record, a fuck you to history.
So we were gonna make a mixtape,
we had it all planned out but somewhere somehow somebody fucked up.
Didn’t find the record store before it was looted.
Half of us running around crying ’cause we can’t find our Biggie.
U2 was quiet as Left Eye;

the closest we got to Jeff Buckley was the rainwater leaping off a leaf
onto the skull of a rottweiler, but that dog was long dead, and the flies
pushed us back ’til we staggered on Wall Street’s ledge.
Thank god

we could still ration out our weed.
We made it last longer than our mommas could a dollar.
In the sky Aaliyah was always flyin’, only flyin’,

we swear this was a mixtape, we beatboxed the whole thing,
Rahzel laid it down like throat cancer was a straight 808,
like Gil Scott-Heron just borrowed Jesse’s face

the beatbox was the basement for the a capella voices
and b-girl bodies, spinning in a bomb shelter,
we rocked our favorite hits three nights straight,
giving the sick a soundtrack to die to,
only half of us believed in God but the party was too hot,
too revolt, too railroad,

we couldn’t find MJ but the floor kept moving
we couldn’t find our Biggie, but we was still ready to die,
I swear this was a mixtape, but you can’t duplicate
the DJ in the—the DJ in the—

…
…
…
…

forgive the silence
that whole time we weren’t talking
we were too busy fuckin’
our very bodies were a mixtape,
heavy sweat of Los Angeles, that violent 1989.

When this tape is done, write down with pride that we’re dead,
write that we swallowed the bullet
and coughed up a boombox,

tell your kids about Spike Lee,
tell ‘em about Do The Right Thing,
tell ‘em your grandaddy was Radio Raheem,

tell ‘em our last words were not about a mixtape,
but a record store trash can flying into glass.

I swear this was a mixtape,
we just didn’t know how to make it
somewhere this was a mixtape
the DJ was wai—

poem: lost

As of yesterday, her ex-husband is dead. She is seventy.
I am twenty-nine, with no idea how I’ll get there.
But I know there was a time I wanted to be seventy with you.

I imagine, if it happens, if you are the one to die first,
when the news hits, I’d ask, what time?
When they told me 7:29pm, I’d strain to remember

what I was doing, at that moment, on that day. The terror
is that I’ll remember that I was not pre-occupied
with something vibrant or vital;

I had just felt nothing.

I am not ready for seventy. To endure this last, patient bite
for choosing to walk away.

The space     between hands and the skin that no longer wants them
The space    between a body split into two houses and lives
The space    between lungs born to expel each other
The space    between the final cruelties that broke our lust in half
The space    from the hand to the phone
The space    that nightly lights into a howl
The sp a ce
The spa c e
The s pa c e

The moment
when your flickering, dying mind strains to frame
a blurred shot of me, when something dimming inside
you says, Lost One. For this, you were supposed to be here.

poem: saudade (there are no fouls in streetball)

When shooting
baskets,
alone,
at night,
in that light rain,
the rules change.
Your hands find the ball before your eyes will.
You aren’t built for the nocturne.
Your tongue is not the snake’s; it leads you nowhere.

The streetlights only help from a distance,
as when the slithering orange pierces your glasses,
it bends into unwanted stars.

The ball is wet. There is beauty in an acknowledged
lack of grip. Form over friction:
Grief is a team game you practice alone.

When you insist on shooting a three,
you will not see the ball’s fate,
but you can hear the clank. Hear
the swish.

And the feet.
There is no wandering here.
To a watcher’s flashlight-ed eye,
you may appear to stumble, stutter.
This is rain choreography.
Night toes en pointe.

And then the game.
You invent the stiff-backs,
the drag-footers, shit-talkers,
the slick and quiet foul-ers.
You take no free throws. You dance em down.
You don’t “settle” for the jump shot. You kill with it.
This, at least, you have earned.

At some point, you look up, as if her ghost
has nothing to do in the ether but watch.

You remember shooting on this court earlier,
in the baby dusk, you at one hoop,
another dude at the other,
til he leaves after announcing, I don’t do lightning.

You stay after this, wondering how a lick
of electric could feel to an already fried body.

Three years after her death,
I can swish a triple with my left hand.
This comes from practice.
From sublimating fury.
From a music
that on this night,

floods the body,
through a reverb of rain.

poem: when a telepath ruins the silent auction

By now, you’ve learned to recognize her.
She wears the same heels every time.
You’ve been organizing these auctions for fifteen years,

and she’s the only hustler that eludes you.
You’ve caught the cheap skate boyfriends,
hoping to score a gift to cash out of the doghouse;

the elderly ladies who attempt to rewrite someone else’s
bid in red pen. They never seemed to realize the distinction
of a trembling hand, or the fact that no one puts such care

into their handwriting anymore. But this one. She is
your white whale in garter. And you hate those heels; no matter
what she wears, they always clash. But even more,

you loathe the self-satisfied glitter in her eyes,
as she flits from one conversation to another,
until–in mid-sentence–she excuses herself and walks away.

You know where she’s heading. This time she wants
those plane tickets to Florida. Not because she visits that
table, but because she visits all the others. It just can’t be that

easy. You wonder if she knows you’re watching.
But here’s the rub: she hasn’t broken a letter of the auctioning
law. Can you accuse her of sensing which item will get

the least attention that night? Can you prove why she
always knows when a leading bid is a bluff?
What you want most is not to expose and expel her, but to ask

why she chooses to exploit her talent here, at a pauper’s auction;
why she didn’t make a fortune investing, talking her way out
of speeding tickets, or coaching football?

Then, you feel her. Standing behind you,
waiting to speak. You turn, hollow a hello.
No one is there.

You dart through the room, searching for those heels,
interrogating every name that signed a bid for Florida.
You stop. You are unsure why. You excuse yourself to a quiet room,

hesitantly open your phone, and dial.
Your wife answers, crying.
She asks, How did you know?

poem: dinner with a racist

“The story of barbecue is the story of America.” ~Vince Staten

“My favorite animal is steak.” ~Fran Lebowitz

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” ~Calvin Trillin

It’s been my belief that every flavor of hatred has a history. If I wanted to understand it, all I needed was a recipe.  So I drove down to Mississippi and bought some squash and greens. I bought pig’s feet from Memphis, my favorite seasonings from Laramie and sweet potatoes from Southern Cali. I then drove to Florida and begged a smiling woman to share with me

a recipe. When I finally returned home, my kitchen seemed to recoil. I pretended it was from excitement. My blood was hot.

I followed the recipe to the letter, and as the aroma began to rise, my eyes began to roll back. My veins were throbbing and I did not know why. When the dish was finished, when it entered my mouth, I was disturbed by its flavor. This was too good. Every mouthful and swallow felt like my hands on the wheel of a truck dragging someone that did not belong. I stuffed myself with this elixir. My belly was bursting and starving. At the point I succumbed to the stupor, that’s when the visions began. I could see my Jewish ex-girlfriend, she was crying in front of a colored boy that looked something like me. When had I become so ugly. When had my hands developed such audacity, touching her skin like it belonged to me. When she cried into my arm I vomited and did not know why.
I saw myself at age seven. I was kissing a boy even blacker than me. I grabbed my seven year old neck and dragged him to the nearest pile of dog shit. My hands were shaking. I needed something to fuck. It was 1944 and I saw a herd of sickly Japs lounging around in a camp. I paused to lick a flag. In 1923 some woman tried to vote and I did not know why. In Oakland there was a riot. My arm was a nightstick. I chose a boy that reeked of salsa. I beat him the national anthem. I sculpted his bones a documentation. His blood and teeth were singing now we live here…and we do not know why.

When the meal was digested, when the stupor was gone, I howled from the withdrawal. The ingredients were all used up, and the elixir was from a source I could not supply. I didn’t know what it would take to expel that which my history had given. I didn’t know how hard it could be to let a hatred die. I begged Memphis for forgiveness. Took a steak knife and carved myself a cross. I cried, have mercy on my marches, my resilience, my faith. I have worn the tongue of the lost. At last, I understand.

poem: a serenade to michelle bachmann, in 3:4 time, from the boombox held over my head, naked at the capitol

As much as I love hip hop, and soul,
and classical, and nuevo tango,
there’s a part of me that will only moan
for bluegrass. The black power side of me
says this is fucked up. The dancer in me
says this is nothing my hips can dig with.
The blister of me says it’s the first and only reason
to wake up. Blame it on the fiddler, with fingers every bit
as adept as Ihtzak Perlman’s and nails thrice as dirty.
Blame it on the sweat of an apple neck that only took
a break to throb in time with the stomp,
those feet that forget the ache for an hour of a collision of
their own making. This is a white ass bar, and I’m a sore thumb
covered in soot, ’cause I too had a long weary day, and
I too am ready to close my eyes and throw down.
This ain’t a music drizzled from the gods,
this is the aftertaste of the buried body. And all poetry aside,
this is how I’m asking you to love me. As if our bones
are sprouting an unmowed lawn. This is the magic
of the white ass bar with the old black dude in the corner
too drunk to remember he never got his mule.
This bluegrass trio is a sociological problem:
the bassist is the kind of heavyset, white-bearded
fella I too easily imagine offering candy to an eighth-grader;
the lead singer is the kind of proper forty-something
aunt whose eyes would ask the niece I’m dating
if she’s lost her mind; the fiddler is the crazy uncle
that likely just slithered out of jail with a Strom Thurmond
tattoo on the left cheek of his behind.
And here they are, all four hundred years of them,
playing that song like they knew it was the realest taste
of reparation I was ever gonna get. I tell you this to say
that despite every indication that we could never work,
I’ve already discovered a taste for dissonant liquor,
and there are times when familiarity must give way to
the thrill of what the hell was that? ‘Cause let’s face it,
this bar smells disgusting, and when the music stops
they’ll probably never know my name, and my black power
side asks why this is okay.

In third grade, at least three times I dreamt of Harriet Tubman
trying to kill me. She carried an ax, and her eyes seemed to curse
me for leaving her work undone. Were she to return,
before the blade split me, I would point her to you,
body swaying to a music that was once the background
to a burning cross, and I’d whisper that when you
eventually break my heart, I will split in three part harmony,
my lips upturned with the snapping of the fiddler’s strings.
I will tell her, this is how it needed to be.
This is still my country, even as it bleeds me.
This dirt road is greener than our ghosts will believe.
Our bloody grass is faithful, and always thirsty.